A Surgeon's Surgeon: A Man With Lives In His Hands

June 13, 1993|By EVALYNE C. ROBINSON Book Reviewer

At age 66, W. Hardy Hendren III rides a BMW 750 motorcycle, water-skis, and is the author of numerous scientific publications. A humble, unassuming man, to most people his name does not mean a lot. But at Children's Hospital in Boston where, as a pediatric surgeon for the past 40 years he has performed more than 20,000 operations on patients, he is an American hero who performs feats in the operating room that most other doctors shun or consider impossible. Hendren's passion is saving lives and making those lives more normal and rewarding.

Nicknamed "Hardly Human" because of his ability to perform almost endless surgery, he is, says C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General, "a surgeon's surgeon: one of the world's best."

"The Work of Human Hands" by G. Wayne Miller is the story of the career of Hendren, now chief of surgery at Children's Hospital and the Robert E. Gross Professor of Surgery at the Harvard Medical School.

Hendren's Irish ancestors arrived in America in 1733 and settled in Virginia. Among the better known was Jeremiah Hendren, the great-great-grandfather of Hardy Hendren III, who was a Baptist preacher and merchant in Norfolk.

"The Work of Human Hands" is also the story of Children's Hospital, founded in Boston in 1869 by Civil War veterans and four Harvard-educated physicians (following much political and professional wrangling) in a three-story brick house that housed 20 iron beds with casters and hair mattresses. The first year of its operation, the hospital served a total of 30 sick children. In contrast, by the year 1900, nearly 16,000 admissions and 250,000 outpatients were recorded at Children's, many from outside of Massachusetts, including 184 from foreign countries.

It was at Children's in 1938 that Robert E. Gross, 33, considered the best pediatric surgeon in the world, revolutionized cardiac surgery worldwide when he defied his superior's orders to perform a successful heart surgery on a 7-year-old girl, thereby becoming a legend in the field and a mentor to younger surgeons, including Hardy W. Hendren III who studied with him at Harvard Medical School.